West siding phase two track construction underway!

In another great show of teamwork and after several months of hard work clearing and excavating the area for phase two of the installation of the siding west of the Livonia, Avon & Lakeville Railroad, the volunteers of the R&GVRRM got to work installing the track for the second phase of the siding.   By the end of the work day, 400 feet of ties were dropped and spaced on to the newly graded land.  Additionally, 150+ feet of rail was placed with nearly 90 feet spiked completely on the east rail and at every other tie on the west.  There is much more work to do and hopefully the weather will continue in the museum's favor.

In the meantime, please enjoy a slide show of the work done on 11/21/2009 along with some pictures of the results taken on 11/22/2009.   And if you like what you see, please consider lending a hand or consider a donation to allow us to purchase all of the stone we need to complete this phase of the siding.

Searching for the right color...

As you work on some restoration projects, you eventually have to start considering painting and the question, "What is the correct color to use?".   In the case of our ex-New York Central 'Empire State Express' cars, the exterior paint/color answer is easy.   Stainless steel.  No paint required!   Yet, the interiors for the cars are another question.   For now, our focus is on the interior of NYC #2567, and what is the correct color to paint the interior.   At 68 years old, the car has certainly seen several interior paint jobs.   It has also seen two configurations; its original 56-seat long distance configuration and its current 80-seat 2-by-2 walkover seating configuration.   For the R&GVRRM, we will be retaining the second configuration, but want to know what colors the interior was painted to allow us to decide how to properly restore the interior.

There are two ways to determine paint color and typically a combination of both can be very powerful.  Having paint samples/drift cards or paint names/paint codes from the manufacturer or railroad is the first.   Doing some careful detective work on the paint already in the car is the second.   For the R&GVRRM, we currently are only able to investigate the paint in the car as we hope to find a source for paint information.   That is what we did during our Tuesday evening work session of 11/17/2009.

Two areas of the car, the wall panel between two of the windows and the wall up near the ceiling of the car toward the end of the car, were investigated by careful sanding:   Both areas showed the same layers of paint, so only the wall is shown here.   The buff color paint on the surface is paint the museum applied which was close, but lighter to what was on the walls when the museum acquired the car.   The darker buff color can be seen followed by a yellow under that followed by some primer layers followed by another layer of a buff colored paint followed by several primer layers.   The assumption which the museum would love to have confirmed is that the buff color closest to the steel is probably the original color.  The is corroborated in photographs taken by noted New York Central photographer, Ed Nowak.   The colors after that are just a guess, but the assumption is that the yellow may correspond to the rebuilding of the cars into the commuter configuration and the buff would be a later repaint.  Possibly the yellow may have come before the rebuilding to the commuter configuration.   More investigation in areas of the car that would have been new to the car at the commuter rebuild may shed more light into the painting history of the car.   The R&GVRRM would also certainly welcome anyone with information on the history of the cars to please contact us.  It will be greatly appreciated.



A nice November day means progress...

Sixty plus degree sunny days in November are very few in Rochester so the volunteers of the Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum took full advantage of this rare day on November 7, 2009.

West siding excavation project

The west siding excavation project is drawing closer to being completed as the site is coming to grade.   Some finishing work was being done by the museum's Huber-Warco road grader and the museum's Case 580 Super K backhoe.   This day's work was built on work done on October 27th shown in this YouTube video with a nice surprise from the Livonia, Avon & Lakeville Railroad.



All of the progress can seen here in these two views looking from the south end of the excavation site toward the already installed siding seen to the right of the tree line in the distance.   The magnitude of the dirt moved can be easily seen in the second view.

 

'Empire State Express' coach work
The work on the museum's ex-New York Central 'Empire State Express' cars continued in earnest, and it was nice to be able to work both inside and outside.   In the museum's restoration shop, work on the interior refurbishment of NYC #2567 continued with some detail painting of the bracketry that holds the decorative stainless steel heater covers and the seats.  

While the majority of the car is built from stainless steel, there brackets are carbon steel and thus required a solid coat of paint to prevent them from rusting.

Outside the shop, museum volunteer, Dave Peet, was busy installing one of the new reglazed window modules into another one of the coaches.   The museum set a goal to replace all of the glazing in all five of its operating coaches.  It has completed the reglazing and temporary replacement of the windows on four of the five cars.   The museum still needs to go back and permanently install the window modules in all of the cars, but great progress has been made on this tough and tedious project.

The museum always welcomes new volunteers to come and join us.  We also need your financial support to keep these projects moving forward.